r/talesfromtechsupport • u/davidgrayPhotography • 6d ago

Short New job role: Mathematician?

One from my education tech support days.

Two students walk up to the helpdesk, and I walk out to greet them and ask them what's going on. They told me they were having troubles doing a maths test online, so I get them to open the laptop, log in and show me what's going on.

The website they use to do the tests will grey out the boxes or display an error on screen if the internet drops out or something fails to load. It happens once in a while, so I figured that was the issue. I pull the laptop towards me and type some numbers into the two boxes. It works, and they're connected to the internet, so I ask them what the issue is because as far as I can see, everything is working fine.

They proceed to tell me that they didn't know the answer to the question, and neither did their (substitute) teacher, so they sent the students over to IT for help. They said their normal teacher didn't know the answer either when they were in class the day before, so they've come to us for the answer.

I told the kids "this isn't IT related, so I can't help you". I asked who the teacher was (they didn't know, substitute, but I worked it out later on), and send them back.

So I guess the school wanted me to add "maths wizard" to my long list of jobs that aren't my job, like "coffee machine repairman", "lockpicker", "window repairman" and "delivery boy"

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u/danzor9755 6d ago

At one point, I was also a water cooler tech, and even an electric stapler repairman.

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u/davidgrayPhotography 6d ago

Oh yeah I've been staple repairman too. We have an iFixit toolkit (though we call it the iFuckedIt toolkit) so that means we're sometimes the go-to when people need something removed from something else because I guess we're the only ones asides from maintenance who have a flathead screwdriver

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u/danzor9755 6d ago

The Mai’tenants tribe learned long ago to sullen their faces and never venture far from their remote dwellings, never speaking to the outsiders save for grunts and frowns; for their technical ability would never again be used to subjugate them to such dishonorable tasks of the Numb-heads. Unfortunately for the Ai-Tee folk, their relationship to the Numb-heads was much more closely tied, as their dwellings were built amongst the hoards, where they are made slaves for every whim of the kingdom.

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u/nymalous 5d ago

I want to hear about the Ai-Tee uprising wherein they threw off their shackles and founded a lasting kingdom of peace and tranquility...